NORTH ANDOVER – The offensive mistakes, especially early, hurt North Andover High dearly on Friday night.
Now, the Knights are hoping that the grit they showed defensively all night and the resilience displayed in the fourth quarter pay dividends when the latest MIAA power rankings appear on Tuesday morning.
North Andover fell behind 7-0 at the half and 22-0 through three quarters, then threw a minor scare into Billerica, falling 22-14.
Each team entered at 3-3, with the Knights holding down a precarious No. 15 ranking in Division 2. Billerica’s power ranking should help North Andover, which faces Tewksbury next week in the regular-season finale.
“Obviously it depends on what other teams do, but I assume we’ll drop. This could knock us to 16 or 17,” said Knights coach John Dubzinski.
“Honestly, the playoffs are the last thing on our minds. We have to get a win. We have to play better. We have Tewksbury, a very good team, a team that is going to be tough to beat.”
Turnovers, specifically a pair of fumbles, derailed North Andover, which had a modicum of success on the ground.
One giant Billerica play, a 48-yard Steven Gentile to Matt Gray deep ball on 3rd-and-24 from midfield, kept it from being a scoreless first half.
The connection set up a Judd Dorival one-yard TD for the lone points of the opening 24 minutes.
The Knights chewed up 104 yards on the ground, split evenly by Ben Iglesias and Billy Vincent, in their four possessions, but couldn’t get deeper than the Billerica 27.
“We had issues with ball security and turnovers, and we missed some golden opportunities in the first half,” said Dubzinski. “We would have liked to go in 7-7 at halftime, and we put the ball on the ground.”
North Andover finally got moving in the fourth, behind some real courageous work from Vincent in the QB spot.
The junior moved the chains with his feet, refusing to go down at times, and made it pay off with a 32-yard TD dash right up the middle just over two minutes left.
“Full credit to Billy Vincent there,” said Dubzinski. “He took some serious hits, he bounced off tacklers, and he just kept coming at them. You have to build off that kind of stuff.”
Sean Kilcoyne recovered Christian Valentino’s onside kick for North Andover and Jeff LaVolpicelo had a pair of long catches – one from Vincent and the other from Austin Allen – setting up another Vincent score, this one from five yards out with 13 seconds left.
This time, though, Billerica would fall on the onside kick, and run out the time for the hard-earned win.
“I thought our defense really played tough tonight, better than the offense,” said Dubzinski.
Linebackers Kilcoyne and Luke Sutera had big performances, as did the big men in the trenches like Michael Phelps, Alex Phillips and Matt Uttley.